Introduction: How Mental Health Matters

Abstract

The underpinnings of today’s mental health crisis include both social structural inequities and neurobiological vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded and escalated a long-standing problem, rendering the mental health crisis and its dangerous consequences visible and exigent. We now possess a clearer and more nuanced understanding of the broken mental health care system and its serious inadequacies, as well as its potential for effective caregiving. The professional forms of knowledge and practice are paralleled by an even more substantial system of care involving families, networks, communities, and, of course, those living with mental health conditions themselves. Even when delivered by community care workers, psychotherapy can be as effective as somatic treatments for some mental health conditions. Harm reduction and other public health approaches offer means of preventing or mitigating the disastrous human toll of the substance use disorder epidemic. Social technology offers new opportunities for enhancing mental health and well-being. With these informal systems alongside standardized health care systems, the future could realize a mental health care system with much greater potential to avert the worst harms and offer effective care to many more.